“The first deal we did was with Merck in 2003. That was a very small starter deal, $7.5 million upfront, driven by Steve Friend who had a real passion for this space and the science. These early deals are often driven by the passion of an R&D leader to do something bold. Steve was the visionary at Merck who said… let’s do a deal with Alnylam.” — John Maraganore, Former CEO of Alnylam

This is the Power of One. You need only ONE who believes in you and your idea.

There is at least one person in big pharma who can see what you have seen—and they’re willing to move mountains for you.

Once you find that one believer, everything else becomes irrelevant… the economy, markets, macro environment… they don’t matter! (Even IRA!)

Investors? Same thing… When you’re fundraising, you’re looking for a market of ONE.

There’s always ONE irrational and unreasonable investor out there who’s willing to bet on you.

And then, they’ll go and convince all the partners, and more VC firms will join until ultimately they’ll all prove to be rational and reasonable to bet on you…

Regulators? Same thing… You don’t get approved by the FDA; you get approved by people.

You get approved by a “Chief of Oncology and Hematology at the FDA who loses his wife to ovarian cancer and declares a jihad to streamline the review process…” (Read For Blood and Money by Nathan Vardi, p.150)

Now, how do you find the ONE?

You keep searching for the one, you become better at listening, you find intersections between what you care about and what they care about, you keep building and maintaining those relationships, you show them how much you care, you take nothing personally, and you keep believing when there doesn’t seem to be any believers around.